In this episode of In Our Time, host Melvyn Bragg and 3 academic guests discuss Henry Fielding’s novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749)

The History of Tom Jones is a comic, a bildungsroman and a picaresque novel and is among the earliest English works categorised as a novel.

It is a highly organized novel in 3 parts. It’s also long, over 800 pp.

In summary, Squire Allworthy finds a foundling, an abandoned baby sleeping in his bed. Allworthy organises for the infant to be raised in his household. As a young man, the kind and generous but headstrong Thomas or Tom is banished by Allworth and heads out on adventures, getting into trouble along the way to London. Eventually, Tom marries Sophia, the woman he loves.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00202lf